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eas 23 ek, aroey McDermott - Former - Foreign. “Office Adviser, to the Secret Intell | gence Service - Is FHI BY ‘really all that important? Do his activities, i present and = future, “geet Mistity. a log newspaper ee: ae b probe ‘and * ravaged soul vid °° 0d searching by ihe authorities? web cp Or ta the Bond and Dolly oy Délly syndrome warping the aa judginent of serious. people? an ‘ For a start, it is worth : a recording the opinion of those ds inside the intelligence world, . i I-have been able to do this. = There. is-no doubt In the ot minds'. of the Secret In- ect ee tories ence Service, Up to 1951, wep Phib y had solid hopes of .+ 3) + | becoming head of that organi- ee gation: and, as they later dis- 2 covered, he was doing max: one eae dumag e in those same : ve years, E ually. the KGB (the oy ‘Tussin 3 ntclligence service) _ risked keeping him in the nt West for a dozen years after he came under suspicion as . the’ Third Man, because . of ’ JPhis continued usefulness to & them. : i Past, i by ¢ Ceotirey poe Ilis use was not merely in the provision of disconnected detail, By luck and judgment, thls master spy and arch Irailor was able to rat Moscow nat only with § dentovment in-the field, but with Information on the ‘state of their intelligence on Com- , wunist affairs, Untike George | lake, he was able, in fact, to infuetice pee, both n British ; ayiet i. und —————— sare CEE ef et ie Subject the - service lo a ~The” “picture | of. “survival iiven ‘in Insight's teport is a shocking one. On | four sepurate occasions he Fol away with the benefit of the doubt: on the tast he simply gol away. The reasons are two- old. One was that he had proved himself, to the Ameri- Cans as well as the British, a very high-class operator who was also a charming felluw, “one of us.” The other wits even more scrious: the poli- ticians’ reluctance ta deal with a very unsavoury ques- tion on its merits, Any assessment of possible reforms must begin with what has already been done, While Philby double-crossing us, we were pulling in poud numbers of igh-grade defectors from the other side. One could name at least fifteen in the past two decades who have entercd with equal zest into the double game and given us critically valuable informa- tion, Great credit for this fe to Sir Dick While, by far he best head of S1S we have As a former head af ats he has defused the pernicious” rivalry between hese two services and, equaliy important, fot rela. tions with the CIA back on A Rood footing. de has also improved S18 ‘practice in security and re- cruitment. Socially the service is now considerably more hetcrogenenus Foreign Oiice. They also treat | ipecurity against enemy pene- tration very Seriously... My own main reservation about the top SIS echelons is that they are too gentle. { manly tin a deadly. ame Where that is a ~ definite | disadvantage. Nevertheless, | think that the Great vaite ‘of Insight’s report is the ques- lion it raises about SIS's ollical and ‘public accounta- ility. "I believe. that the | present dispersal of power etween.the Foreign Office and’ the ‘Prime Minister ex- poses STS -to ‘a dangerous degree of autonomy. To my mind: there is a A strang case for a new baidy, quite outside , Whitehall and Westminster, jigular overhauls, and, if site Overhaul,; i “Philby’ 84 and ‘hif“friends' were’ than: the: v SB s$ont exists: at the ay any t i a ay Prine Mist —_ . , | train for Moscow. Ady Inbred” teas ‘Commis: but no one seems to pay, aay ; en attention to‘ its ‘repo True ~ outsiders ure already coming more and inore into usecin'|! the Government machine, and in the United States they are co-cpted into the White House ilsel? ta advise |an secret matters of ‘global policy. A proup here consist. ing of, for instance, a suita bis high. powered busine ssi an, scientist, journatist, don. judse, and wontan might well produce a valuable’ inerease in public: confidence, which scems incredible ever j though it is ‘true, “shows. that we need them. > We ‘can dis- 4 miss the tired joke that we | have no secrets worth’ the | keeping. The KGB do ‘hot scem to think so. The dav we can relax will be fhe day the last KGB agent géts the There: is no sign “of a slackening of KGB activity in Britain: quite the contrary. We can he ~* | certain that hidden in the * | recesses of the Western body tial Philbys. And in his K GR office Kim is hard at work right now on the best method to recruit and explolt them. IN Fed och apart n The Philby phantasmagocia, ral g ot ‘ Prife “et aeerad - . ve rare .” | politic there are othor poten. J. AY Pa ache. tent pee